Medieval Europe Cooks?

What if the Medieval period of Europe never happened?

• Once the Antiquity period ended European civilisation entered the 'Dark Ages' for almost a millennium until the Renaissance. During the Medieval period there was not much technological advancement. What would the world be like now if the Medieval period never happened and the Renaissance followed Antiquity?

• Answer:

  The question makes a number of presuppositions that aren't exactly true, which makes a coherent answer rather difficult.  Firstly, it assumes that the commonly held idea that the Middle Ages were one of stagnation and a lack of technological advancement is actually true.  Secondly, it assumes that technological "advancement" is some kind of Whiggish,  inevitably "onward and upward" process of constant development and improvement.  So the idea seems to be that if there was no 1000 year long hiatus between the "advanced" Roman era and the "revived" Renaissance, we we would be much more "advanced" today than we are now. There are major problems with all this. To begin with, the idea that the Middle Ages were a benighted dark age that were only relieved by the glorious dawning of the "Renaissance" is a Nineteenth Century historical caricature, though one still taught by high school history teachers.  We now have a far better understanding of the Medieval period and realise that western Europe recovered from the collapse of the Roman Empire centuries before the so-called "Renaissance".  There is no doubt that the western half of the Roman Empire never fully recovered from the Empire's near disintegration in the Third Century and, since it was poorer, less populated and less economically robust than the eastern half, it collapsed in the Fifth Century while the Eastern Empire survived.   There is also no doubt that for the next five centuries Europe was wracked by repeated invasions from all directions, the decline of long-distance trade and the fragmentation of political structures.  So it's true that in this period we don't see many large public building programs or much new learning and science. But we actually do see, contrary to the popular myths, is some quite significant technological advances, especially in farming.  The Romans had effective water-wheels and seem to have known of the mouldboard plough.  But it was in the early Middle Ages that people looking to find more efficient ways to farm using less labour adapted and improved these two key pieces of technology.  The invention of horse-shoes, the horse collar and the adoption of the heavy mouldboard plough meant that land which could never have been cultivated in Roman times became highly productive.  Huge tracts of what had been forest and moorland in northern Europe became cultivated, making northern Europe - formerly the poor relation of the Roman world - into a far wealthier place.  Water power was harnessed on a scale never seen in the Roman period, with water mills being used not just to grind grain, but also to full cloth, produce leather, drive lathes, pump bellows and power trip hammers.  As a result, metals' technology advanced well beyond what a Roman smith could produce by hand via water-powered industrialisation.  New ways to harness mechanical power were also developed.  Mills harnessing tidal power were developed and the windmill was invented.  Blast furnaces were another Medieval European innovation. So the idea that the "dark age" of the Early Medieval Period was one of technological stagnation is simply wrong.  If anything, the political fragmentation  and economic decline that followed the fall of the Roman Empire actually stimulated new technology and drove developments in agrarian and semi-industrial production. Similarly, the idea that the "Renaissance" of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries was the first revival after the fall of Rome is another romantic Nineteenth Century myth.  As the economy of Medieval Europe picked up pace thanks to the innovations and developments described above, there was a corresponding revival in education and scholarship.  Europe was in far more contact with the rest of the Mediterranean due to a revival of trade and the wars of the Crusades and the Reconquista in Spain.  Rumours of lost works of Greek and Roman science and philosophy being preserved by Muslims led scholars such  as Gerald of Cremona to travel to Spain and Sicily to learn Arabic and  work with Muslim and Jewish scholars to translate these works and bring  them back to the west.  This influx of "new" learning stimulated a  vigorous revival of scholarship in Europe, helped trigger the rise of  universities and, in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, saw a  flowering of science not seen anywhere for centuries. The result was a Europe-wide network of scholars and scholarship that didn't just revive the philosophical and scientific work of the Greeks and Romans but began to build on it and, eventually, correct some of it.  Medieval scientists like Albertus Magnus, Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, John Peckham, Duns  Scotus, Thomas Bradwardine, Walter Burley, William Heytesbury, Richard  Swineshead, John Dumbleton, Richard of Wallingford, Nicholas Oresme,  Jean Buridan and Nicholas of Cusa began to lay the foundations of what would eventually result in the birth of the true scientific method.  Medieval scientists were particularly interested in optics and the study of the nature of light using lenses.  It seems to have been this tinkering with lenses that led to another Medieval gift to the world - eye glasses.  The increased demand for books due to the rise of universities also led to experiments with the mass-production of books and, eventually, to another Medieval invention - the printing press.  And experiments with ways to mechanise time keeping paid off in the later Thirteenth Century with the invention of the first mechanical clock. So the idea that the Middle Ages were some kind of scholarly and technical hiatus and that if this hadn't happened we would be more "advanced" is based on several false assumptions.  The Renaissance was a movement in art and architecture that produced some very good paintings and buildings.  But it did little to produce anything technological.  Despite their popularity today, Leonardo da Vinci's drawings of flying machines etc were little more than whimsical doodles.  Leonardo's fanciful flying machine would never have flown.  Yet in around 1100 AD a Medieval monk called Eilmer of Malmsbury built a flying machine, launched it from the roof of his abbey and flew several hundred meters. The fact that everyone has heard of Leonardo's doodles and virtually no-one has ever heard of Eilmer's first experiment in manned flight says a great deal about the way the Middle Ages is overlooked and ignored, despite it being a remarkable period of history.